cyber-pornography addiction (CPUI-9), family relationship (ECR-RS), and religiosity (Demographic).
To understand the impact of sexual shame, it is necessary to evaluate the validity and reliability of the original KISS and developing the refined KISS. This study sought to identify: (1) The latent constructs that emerge from a refined set of items derived from the KISS, (2) a one-factor model that has a close model fit, (3) a two-factor model that has a close model fit, (4) a bifactor model that has a close model fit, and (5) the refined KISS subscales that are meaningfully related to other measures in a way that is theoretically consistent with shame. This chapter provides an investigation into the literature about shame, mental problems relating to shame, the causation of sexual shame, the influence of relationship styles (avoidance or anxiety) on sexual shame, and the relationship between sexual shame and pornography use.
Shame Definition of Shame
Shame, along with guilt, is an important factor in the emotional development of morality.
Specifically, shame affects the development of early morality, which has a great influence on a person’s moral behaviors (Erikson, 1993; Freud, 1899/1973; Shahar, Doron, & Szepsenwol, 2015; Thompson, 2015). Some scholars address the difficulty of distinguishing shame and guilt because shame and guilt develop at the same time in the early life (Cȃndea & Szentágotai-Tătar, 2018; Kim, Thibodeau, & Jorgensen, 2011). Shame is characterized by a sense of failure and excessive sensitivity and inner wound from the critical evaluation of others, while guilt is
characterized by a tendency to recover after violating the norm (Clark, 2017; Pivetti et al., 2016).
Shame and guilt are distinguished in this manner: Guilt is the feeling of “what I did”; shame is the feeling of “who I am” (Kim et al., 2011; Pinto-Gouveia & Matos, 2011; Pivetti et al., 2016).
Childhood abuse and neglect can cause children to become immersed in and immobilized by shame, which affects their cognitive schema and personality (Shahar et al., 2015). Shame is a negative emotion associated with self-consciousness and feelings of inferiority (Gilbert & Irons, 2009), powerlessness (Gilbert, Allen, & Goss, 1996), and the desire to disappear (Cȃndea &
Szentágotai-Tătar, 2018). In this respect, shame can be considered a significant influence on a person’s personality. It is necessary to pay attention to shame in the fields of moral education and counseling (Rüsch et al., 2007). The essential factor causing shame is a tension between the true-self and the ideal-self (Thompson, 2015).
Development of Shame
There are basic emotions such as anger, sadness, disgust, and joy that develop early in life (i.e., between six and eight months of age) and are common across regions and cultures (Erikson, 1993; Kim et al., 2011). Based on these basic emotions, an infant develops and
expresses various emotions and mental abilities, such as symbolic representation, self-awareness, and metacognition (Clark, 2017; Erikson, 1993; Pinto-Gouveia & Matos, 2011). Another of these basic emotions is shame, which is formed between two to three years of age (Erikson, 1993; Freud, 1899/1973; Lagattuta & Thompson, 2007; Kim et al., 2011; Pinto-Gouveia &
Matos, 2011). Self-consciousness about shame arises from the initial interactions with important caregivers (Pinto-Gouveia & Matos, 2011). Shame consists of the self-conscious evaluative emotions that emerge after a child is equipped with the ability to perceive himself or herself in a mirror or photograph and include embarrassment, guilt, envy, and self-esteem (Lewis, 1971;
1993). Wei, Shaffer, Young, and Zakalik (2005) emphasized that shame is the emotion that
begins to be experienced through attachment and interaction with the mother in her early life and attachment.
Shame and Attachment
The child’ s appropriate attachment to the parent plays a significant role in developing a healthy identity and self-awareness (Bowlby, 1997, 2008). Attachment can be considered as a person’s emotional tie to caregivers or significant figure for obtaining or maintaining proximity.
A child uses signaling behaviors such as smiling, crying and calling in order to communicate with one’s parents (Ainsworth et al., 1978). An infant’s relationship with parents plays a significant role in forming various attachment styles such as avoidant attachment anxious attachment, and secure and intimate attachment.
The child’s appropriate attachment to the parent plays a significant role in developing a healthy identity and self-awareness (Bowlby, 1997, 2008). However, early experience with shame hinders a significant attachment to parents by the child. Shame occurs when a caregiver refuses to properly reply to a child who is trying to experience gradual autonomy with free choice (Lewis, 1971; Wei et al., 2005). In other words, the main cause of early experiences of shame is the withdrawal of a caregiver’s love. A baby experiences a reaction of shame when the mother exhibits strange and unfamiliar behaviors instead of loving kindness.
A primitive model of shame would show that a child avoids the mother’s gaze and suddenly falls down when the mother who generally smiles reacts differently with rigidity. If a child experiences the withdrawal of a caregiver’s love, attachment to parents is easily
undermined. Between 18 and 36 months of age, a child develops essential emotions and self-awareness (Erikson, 1993; Lewis, Sullivan, Stanger, & Weiss, 1989). However, when emotional rejection and damage to a child’s attachment to parents occurs, one experiences the
internalization of shame. The lower the level of parental care and attention, the higher the level of internalized shame. From this perspective, shame should be considered interpersonal from its origin.
Shame and Childhood
Shame is the emotion generated by negative evaluation of one’s value, primarily the parents’ evaluation. Shame is an emotion of inferiority (Clark, 2017; Tangney, Wagner, &
Gramzow, 1992). Shame is deeply related to the presence of the caregiver, especially parents.
Children begin to feel shame when they are negatively evaluated by their caregivers (Kim et al., 2011). Furthermore, shame is generated and aggravated when one’s natural tendency to love oneself is hurt in a child’s relationship with parents. During childhood, a person becomes vulnerable to shame if he or she feels criticized by parents or perceives himself or herself to be less loved than his or her siblings by the parents.
When the children’s identity is not accepted by the parent, their self-awareness is
fragmented into a grandiose-self and a small-self (Johnson, Nguyen, Anderson, Liu, & Vennum, 2015). Shame causes various symptoms relating to the emotional struggle that negatively influence a person’s dignity and self-esteem (Gilbert & Irons, 2009). A rupture in the
interpersonal bridge between a mother or a significant caregiver and child is a crucial event that activates shame. The shame developed during the early years affects the identity of the
individual and is internalized into the personality, which sustains the damage of the interpersonal relationship.
Shame and Interpersonal Relationships
The person with shame is evasive, submissive, and sometimes aggressive in interpersonal relationships (Galhardo, Pinto-Gouveia, Cunha, & Matos, 2011). Shame induces unhealthy
thoughts and feelings, including (a) the thought of lagging behind others, (b) the self-perception that something is lacking in oneself, (c) sexual flaws, and (d) the impulse to run away before being exposed to others (Fergus et al., 2010). Shame is a person’s emotional reaction to others who evaluate them negatively, and studies show that there is a connection between an
individual’s assessment of oneself and perception of what other people think of him or her (Carvalho et al., 2015). The internalization of shame implies that a person fears others’
evaluation when he or she is revealed to the world. Shame motivates a person to withdraw or avoid interactions with others because a person with shame believes that he or she is not acceptable to others (Lewis, 1993). Shame is the emotional experience surrounding how individuals believe others perceive them.
A person with internalized shame has a propensity to hide oneself or to escape the view of others. The internalized shame creates an obstruction to establishing a significant and
intimate relationship with family, friends, and lovers (Perry & Snawder, 2017). Individuals with a high level of shame will constantly and frequently struggle to interact with others and will maintain distance from important relationships or relational problems. Shame is related to various personality constructs and psychopathological symptoms, including anxiety, anger, hostility, vengeance, irritability, a tendency to blame others, and a fear of negative appraisal that adversely influences interpersonal relationships.
Shame and Psychopathology
Shame can be positively conceptualized as a social emotion that helps people to keep their social promises (Bradshaw, 2005). However, in many cases, shame negatively influences individuals to hide misdeeds and even minor mistakes from others (Picone, 2016). A person who struggles with shame has difficulty building close relationships with others, even family
members, because it motivates the person not to reveal oneself to others (Clark, 2017; Kim et al., 2011; Picone, 2016). Furthermore, those struggling with shame often do not take responsibility for their own faults or transgression (Clark, 2017; Dearing & Tangney, 2011; Johnson et al., 2015). In this respect, it is not easy to help the client with shame to experience recovery from psychological problems through counseling sessions because of the client’s defense mechanism.
The tendency to avoid self-disclosure and defend against self-expression hinder the efficiency of the counseling process (Lewis, 1971; Tangney & Fischer, 1995). In order to help a client with the internalized shame, a counselor should be aware of the fact that the client is more likely to hide and defend oneself.
People with low self-esteem caused by shame often experience mental health problems like anger, contempt, jealousy, and depression because they are not able to properly respond to external stimuli and are weak in resilience. Clients with shame primarily try to defend
themselves through oppression, but they, in the end, use a range of negative emotions to avoid feelings of shame: (a) anger that attacks those who make a client feel shame, (b) contempt to make one’s opponents feel shame by projecting one’s subjective experience of shame on others, (c) jealousy that tries to destroy one’s opponents for revenge, and (d) depression by
self-deprecation that takes the place of shame (Gilbert et al., 1996). Thus, an individual does not limit his or her responses to simply avoiding and withdrawing from shame, but rather acts against himself or chooses behaviors that inflict pain on others. The more a person feels shame, the less he or she uses mature and healthy defenses in appropriate ways. Such clients need to learn effective and mature skills like self-disclosure and self-awareness of one’s emotions. They need to be encouraged to overcome symptoms of shame by disclosing the shame because
self-disclosure is one of the important factors that effectively and efficiently facilitate the counseling process. Clients should not ignore but instead, focus on and understand their emotions.
Depression. Depression closely relates to shame because depression is a common symptom of shame (Gilbert, 2000). Shame is generally known as a kind of emotion caused by a shameful thought (Kim et al., 2011; Pivetti et al., 2016). A person merely feels ashamed and depressed not because of appropriate emotional reactions but because of inappropriate thoughts.
By nature, people generally experience shame when they do wrong. However, a depressed patient experiences shame even without having done any wrong (Hedman, Strom, Stunkel, &
Mortberg, 2013). A patient with depression is often overwhelmed even by small mistakes (Kim et al., 2011). There is a significant relationship between early shame experiences with parents and depression (Gilbert, 2000; Gilbert et al., 1996). Based on their early shame experiences, some patients set their moral standards too high and defeat themselves due to their dissatisfaction with their moral performances. Such depressed patients need to diminish their feelings of shame by gradually lowering their idealistic expectations. The distinction between guilt and shame is helpful for counselors and patients in understanding why such patients need to lower their expectations: Guilt is related to the behavioral violation of moral standards, but shame arises merely from a thought that one is inferior to others (Fergus et al., 2010; Kim et al., 2011; Lewis, 1971). In this manner, counselors need to help their patients to overcome the thoughts and feelings of shame by helping them to deal with their early shame experiences and their relationship with authority figures through the process of self-disclosure.
Anxiety. Anxiety is one of the basic human emotions. There is no person who does not experience anxiety. Even an infant who cannot speak is able to read the signs of anxiety (Feldman, 2011; Freud, 1899/1973). Furthermore, anxiety is an essential component of human
survival and reproduction, as it can protect a person from external attack. It would not have been possible for humans to survive and reproduce without anxiety. Therefore, anxiety can be
considered a necessary phenomenon that has been a part of human survival history. However, excessive anxiety is considered the cause of mental illnesses, generating a variety of mental problems (Fergus et al., 2010). Many people suffering from anxiety have a tendency to cause an interruption to daily life and to destroy a healthy life. Scholars have investigated the internal and cognitive causes of anxiety: (a) recognizing the self as a worthless and incompetent person, (b) recognizing the world and others as extremely dangerous and intimidating, (c) being very easily concerned, and (d) being equipped with very low self-esteem (Hedman et al., 2013; Wei et al., 2005). In this manner, an anxious person can be easily distracted by shame because of his or her low self-esteem and unhealthy belief that he or she is worthless and not acceptable.
Depression and anxiety were assumed to be generally caused by patients’ shameful or guilty feelings (Gilbert, 2000; Lewis, 1971; Tangney et al., 1992). However, recent studies have found that shame-related emotion is significantly more related to psychopathological problems such as depression than guilt-related emotion (Kim et al., 2011; Tangney et al., 1992).
Additionally, shame is closely linked to mental illnesses such as anxiety (Shahar et al., 2015) and eating disorders (Fergus et al., 2010; Harder, Cutler, & Rockart, 1992; Pinto-Gouveia & Matos, 2011; Rizvi, 2010; Tangney & Dearing, 2003). There are many documented studies about shame that provide clinical and academic support for counselors and patients to assist them in understanding causations and symptoms of various mental problems related to shame. However, given shame surrounding sexuality has recently become a prevalent problem, there is a lack of literature on the shame associated with sexuality.
Shame, Sexuality, and Sexual Abuse
Even in their adulthood, those who have experienced sexual abuse during their childhood need to receive care specifically because of the higher risk for sexual or physical victimization (Feiring & Taska, 2005; Gordon, 2017). People with a history of sexual abuse experience substantial and varied interpersonal conflicts due to their lack of communication skills and interpersonal functions (Gordon, 2017). In comparison to clients without experiences of
childhood sexual abuse, victims of childhood sexual abuse find it more difficult to build healthy communication skills (DiLillo, Giuffre, Tremblay, & Peterson, 2001), and their lack of
communication skills leads to less intimacy, less satisfaction with others, separation, and divorce (Gordon, 2017; Stoops, 2015; Walker-Williams, van Eeden, & van der Merwe, 2012). While there isn’t an empirically established relationship between shame and family conflict among female clients with childhood sexual abuse, various studies purport that the feeling of shame among clients with the experience of sexual abuse plays a pivotal role in communication and relationship development (Feiring & Taska, 2005; Gordon, 2017; Stoops, 2015; Talbot et al., 2004). While a number of scholars in previous studies have concluded that patients who experienced sexual abuse are highly affected by shame and struggle with interpersonal conflict, many recent studies argue that there is no pivotal evidence for a direct relationship between sexual abuse, shame, and interpersonal conflict (Campbell, 1994; Carvalho et al., 2015; Cooper, Delmonico, & Burg, 2000; Feiring, Taska, & Lewis, 1996; Talbot et al., 2004).
Relationship style to caregivers (avoidance or anxiety), more than abuse severity, should be considered as an essential factor that influences a patient’s shame from sexual abuse (Feiring, Taska, & Lewis, 2002; Gorden, 2017). When a person experiences sexual abuse during
childhood, shame produces various cognitive-emotional scars (Feiring et al., 1996). When these
scars are affected by moral and religious condemnations, a child becomes vulnerable to sexual shame. This means that attribution style, which is significantly affected by religious education and conservative family background, can be considered as a factor that develops sexual shame.
Sexual Shame
Sexual shame generally refers to the shame associated with sexuality (Lewis, 1993). The subject of sexuality is fundamentally related to the existence of humankind. Even the Bible introduces the sexual shame of Adam and Eve, the first ancestors of humanity in chapter three of Genesis (Vine & Unger, 1996). Adam and Eve were naked in the Garden of Eden, but they were not ashamed at all. However, after eating the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil, they began to distinguish between good and evil and between the boundaries of self and the world. They became ashamed of their naked bodies. In the distorted perception between good and evil, a person begins to experience sexual shame by fearing others’ gaze on their naked body.
In comparison to the many studies of shame that have produced many meaningful results for the last two or three decades, the progress of studies on sexual shame has been minimal (Campbell, 1994; Carboneau, 2018; Clark, 2017; Kyle, 2013; Thompson, 2015). Insufficient psychological and clinical research has been done on sexual shame, even though many concerns for clients suffering from sexual shame are discussed in psychological fields and on various media, such as News, films, and social network services (Clark, 2017; Shadbolt, 2009). Shame is an emotion that forms during infancy and affects the person throughout his or her whole life.
It has considerable influence and a ripple effect on both the identity of a person and the function of identity in one’s life.
The term sexual shame is mentioned in research in various areas, including religious counseling and clinical counseling (Mollon, 2005; Shadbolt, 2009; Volk et al., 2016), but only a
few studies try to provide an accurate definition of sexual shame and a clear explanation of its differences from shame. The standard definition of sexual shame does not currently exist, but it generally indicates one’s unhealthy tendency to consider oneself as seen in the perspectives of others, particularly in relation to sexuality (Brown, 2006; Kyle, 2013). Clark (2017) pays attention to the client’s negative experiences relating to sexual shame, including humiliation and disgust for one’s body and uncertainty in one’s identity as a sexual being. Furthermore, a person with sexual shame builds up unhealthy beliefs about oneself, which causes the person to consider oneself as being inferior and unworthy.
Once these dysfunctional experiences and feelings internalize, they negatively influence a person’s ability to trust, communicate, and form physical and emotional closeness (Clark, 2017).
Children become aware of sexual shame between ages three and five (Shadbolt, 2009). After that age, they are able to recognize the differences between men and women, and they begin to recognize the different roles undertaken by males and females. If, however, children are not provided with the proper education about sexuality as they become older, they will have a distorted perception about the nature and the roles of sexuality, which then become the basis for experiencing sexual shame.
Sexual shame significantly influences self-consciousness (Clark, 2017; Lewis, 1993). If a person, without one’s awareness or conscience, struggles with the fear of exposing one’s sexual problems or deficiencies, he or she is not able to identify his or her true self. People who were exposed to inappropriate sexual behaviors or abuse during one’s childhood tend to believe that they are unworthy of acceptance and belonging (Clark, 2017). Shame generally develops into a chronic issue that causes an individual to lose his or her identity and to feel like an outsider (Volk et al., 2016). Because of this tendency, the feeling of sexual shame leads a person to
sorrow, fear, inner rage, feelings of worthlessness, and self-judgment. A patient with sexual shame feels alone, rejected, and despised by others.
Development of Sexuality
Sexuality is an essential factor in a person’s identity, and it should be formed through various experiences with parents (Feldman, 2011; Freud, 1905/2000; Lichtenberg, 2011;
Shadbolt, 2009). The emotional and psychological issues of adults are not solely determined by one’s childhood experiences. However, studies show that the psychological and physical events related to sexuality during adolescence should not be underestimated or exaggerated, and that an individual’s experience with siblings during one’s adolescence undoubtedly has an ineradicable effect upon the formation of one’s mental health and sexual identity (Shadbolt, 2009). Similarly, a person’s sexuality can be considered as an outcome of his or her relationship with parents and
Shadbolt, 2009). The emotional and psychological issues of adults are not solely determined by one’s childhood experiences. However, studies show that the psychological and physical events related to sexuality during adolescence should not be underestimated or exaggerated, and that an individual’s experience with siblings during one’s adolescence undoubtedly has an ineradicable effect upon the formation of one’s mental health and sexual identity (Shadbolt, 2009). Similarly, a person’s sexuality can be considered as an outcome of his or her relationship with parents and